Updates

OTTAWA — In response to the new NAFTA deal revealed last night, now called the USMCA free trade agreement, the Council of Canadians says that while Chapter 11 (the investor state dispute settlement provision) has changed, the agreement is still far away from a deal that protects people and the environment.

WHAT: The Council of Canadians will be presenting as an intervenor next week in the federal-provincial Joint Review Panel’s hearings on Teck Resources’ proposed Frontier Mine. The hearings began this week on what would be the largest ever tar sands mine, if built. The Council’s written submission is available here.

Lunenburg – The Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board is holding another “information session” for western NS municipal councillors in Yarmouth this week. Why? To defend its decision to give BP a green light to continue drilling at unprecedented depths in the stormy waters along the Scotian Shelf.

The Council of Canadians is calling Progressive Conservative donors across Ontario to ask them to boycott the party over anti-democratic actions.

The Council of Canadians is calling donors to the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario (PCO) and asking them to stop giving the party money until the Ford government stops undermining democracy in the province.

OTTAWA, TORONTO, MEXICO CITY, WASHINGTON – The political and economic climate in which Canada, Mexico and the United States began the NAFTA renegotiations in 2017 has deteriorated drastically in 2018, with Canada recently being effectively shut out. In the last week of August a tweet from U.S. President Donald Trump announced that the acronym NAFTA would be buried forever to be replaced by a new deal, the U.S.-Mexico trade agreement.

Ottawa – As NAFTA talks head to the wire and the U.S. has demanded the end of cultural exemption, acclaimed Canadian novelist Susan Swan and Maude Barlow, Honorary Chair of the Council of Canadians, plead that Canada should not give in to last-minute U.S. pressure to ditch the exemption.

Ottawa – ­U.S. President Donald Trump has announced that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) will be now called the “U.S.–Mexico Trade Agreement” after shutting Canada out of negotiations for weeks. The Council of Canadians is concerned that this is a sign of an America-first, corporate-friendly deal to come. Changing the name to the United States-Mexico Trade Agreement will not change that.